MLB postseason: What went wrong for six teams with early playoff exits

Ryan Fagan @ryanfagan Updated at 11:55 a.m. ET Updated at 11:55 a.m. ET Watch MLBMLB with fuboTV There were no baseball games Wednesday night, and there aren’t any games Thursday night, either. In October, that’s a miserably long gap for fans of postseason baseball, even if your team wasn’t in the mix. Speaking of miserable, six playoff teams are already done. A short October experience is better than no October experience, but not by much. Especially when you’re one of those teams who spent the season dreaming of — expecting, even — a long October charge. Before the League Championship Series start — both Astros-Red Sox and Dodgers-Brewers should be outstanding — let’s look at the moments or the statistics or the decisions that signaled the end of the road for the six teams that have been eliminated. Yankees Luis Severino didn’t have his best stuff in Game 3, a fact that was obvious to most observers early, thanks to the line drives that came flying off Boston bats with regularity in the first few innings. CC Sabathia wasn’t fooling the Red Sox hitters to kick off Game 4, either. It’s easy to say manager Aaron Boone kept his starting pitchers in too long in retrospect, but it was pretty easy to see Severino and Sabathia should have been pulled sooner in real time, too. RIVERA: Make no mistake: Red Sox now own the rivalry with Yanks In Game 3, the Red Sox scored three times off Severino in the third…. [Read full story]